House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications Thirteenth Report of Session 2010–12 1. This report is strictly embargoed and is not for broadcast or publication, in any form, before 05.00hrs, Wednesday 20 July 2011. 2. This report is issued under the condition that it should not be forwarded or copied to anyone else. 3. Under no circumstances should you distribute copies to anyone else or speak to the media before the publication time about the content of this report. 4. The report is subject to parliamentary copyright and you are not permitted to distribute, replicate, or publish further copies either in hard copy or on the internet either before or after publication. 5. If these instructions are unclear in any way please contact Alex Paterson on 020 7219 1589 or email [email protected] HC 907 Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications 3 House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications Thirteenth Report of Session 2010–12 Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 19 July 2011 HC 907 Published on 20 July 2011 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Home Affairs Committee The Home Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Home Office and its associated public bodies. Current membership Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP (Labour, Leicester East) (Chair) Nicola Blackwood MP (Conservative, Oxford West and Abingdon) James Clappison MP (Conservative, Hertsmere) Michael Ellis MP (Conservative, Northampton North) Lorraine Fullbrook MP (Conservative, South Ribble) Dr Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge) Steve McCabe MP (Labour, Birmingham Selly Oak) Rt Hon Alun Michael MP (Labour & Co-operative, Cardiff South and Penarth) Bridget Phillipson MP (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South) Mark Reckless MP (Conservative, Rochester and Strood) Mr David Winnick MP (Labour, Walsall North) The following members were also members of the committee during the parliament. Mr Aidan Burley MP (Conservative, Cannock Chase) Mary Macleod MP (Conservative, Brentford and Isleworth) Powers The Committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at www.parliament.uk/homeaffairscom. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Elizabeth Flood (Clerk), Joanna Dodd (Second Clerk), Sarah Petit (Committee Specialist), Eleanor Scarnell (Inquiry Manager), Darren Hackett (Senior Committee Assistant), Sheryl Dinsdale (Committee Assistant), Victoria Butt (Committee Assistant), John Graddon (Committee Support Officer) and Alex Paterson (Select Committee Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Home Affairs Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 3276; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications 1 Contents Report Page 1 Introduction 3 Background 3 Subsequent developments 6 Involvement of police witnesses in various inquiries 8 2 The legislation covering interception of electronic communications 12 Computer Misuse Act and Data Protection Act 12 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 14 Impact of the interpretation of the legislation on the police investigations 17 Role of the Information Commissioner 20 3 The police response 25 Police response to hacking allegations 25 The 2005–06 investigation and 2006-07 investigation 25 Assistant Commissioner Yates’s role 35 The new investigation 42 4 The role of the mobile phone companies 47 How the hacking was done 47 Measures taken since to deter hacking 50 Notifying the victims 52 Conclusions and recommendations 56 Appendix 1: Excerpt from What price privacy now? (ICO, 2006) 62 Formal Minutes 63 Witnesses 64 Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications 3 1 Introduction Background 1. In 2005-06, the Metropolitan Police investigated claims that a private investigator, Mr Glenn Mulcaire, had been employed by News International to hack into the Voicemail accounts of certain prominent people, including members of the Royal Household in November 2005, in particular to obtain information on them. This case led to the prosecution and subsequent imprisonment of Mr Mulcaire and Mr Clive Goodman, the royal correspondent for the News of the World. The charges brought against Messrs Mulcaire and Goodman cited a limited number of people whose phones were alleged to have been hacked. However, papers taken from Mr Mulcaire in the course of the investigation indicated that journalists —not necessarily all from the same newspaper — had asked him to obtain information on a number of other people: it was not always clear who the subjects of the inquiries were (a number were identified only by initials or a forename), nor whether the request involved hacking or some other means of obtaining information. 2. In 2006 the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for overseeing the UK’s data protection laws, published two reports, What price privacy? and What price privacy now? which gave details of investigations conducted by his office and the police into “a widespread and organised undercover market in confidential personal information.” In one major case, known as Operation Motorman, the police and Information Commissioner’s Office found evidence that 305 journalists working for a range of newspapers had used a variety of techniques to obtain personal information for their stories (more details are provided in Appendix A). Some of the information could have been obtained only illegally; other pieces of information could be obtained legally (e.g. addresses via voter registration records) but this would have been very time-consuming 4 Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications and the prices paid to the private investigators obtaining the evidence were too low for such onerous work.1 3. In 2009 it became known that one person who considered he had been a victim of hacking by Mr Mulcaire at the instigation of a News of the World journalist had launched a civil case against that paper’s owners, News International and, it was reported, had received a large amount in damages in settlement whilst agreeing to be bound by a confidentiality clause. The successful litigant was Mr Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers Association. The media noted at the time that he was unlikely to have been of interest to the royal correspondent, so it was suspected that other News International journalists or editors might have been involved with similar activities. 4. The names of other successful litigants gradually leaked out. Over the next few months, a growing number of alleged victims of hacking brought civil actions against News International or sought judicial reviews of the handling of the original case by the police, and demanded that the police release documents seized from Mr Mulcaire relevant to their cases. 5. At the same time, the Guardian newspaper was continuing to investigate the relationship between Mr Mulcaire and News International journalists, focusing in particular on claims by some former journalists that practices like hacking were widespread in the News of the World. Because of the concerns raised by the new allegations, on 9 July 2009 the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police asked Assistant Commissioner John Yates, QPM, to look into the case. We deal with both the 2005–06 investigation and Mr Yates’s role in 2009 later in this report. 6. We were aware that our sister committee, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, had had a longstanding interest in the ethics of reporting and reporting methods, and were repeatedly taking evidence on this issue. Whilst the role of the media was clearly part of that Committee’s remit, questions were being asked about the response of the police to the 1 The reports were published respectively in May and December 2006, and may be found at www.ico.gov.uk. The quotation is taken from What price privacy?, paragraph 1.7. Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications 5 original allegations in 2005–06, and there appeared to be some confusion about the interpretation of the legislation governing hacking which had the effect of making it unclear who precisely might be considered a victim of that crime. Accordingly, early in September 2010, we launched an inquiry into ‘Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications’, with the following terms of reference: • The definition of the offences relating to unauthorised tapping or hacking in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and the ease of prosecuting such offences; • The police response to such offences, especially the treatment of those whose communications have been intercepted; and • What the police are doing to control such offences. During the course of the inquiry, it became clear that it was necessary to examine other aspects too: • The scope of the police inquiry in 2005–07; • The role of the mobile phone companies in providing security information to their customers and in relation to those whose phones may have been hacked into; and • The relationship between the police and the media. Our focus has remained on the police, the prosecutors, the victims and the legislation: in this Report we do not attempt to reach any conclusions and recommendations about the actions of specific newspapers or individual journalists. 7. We had invited Mr Yates to give oral evidence to us on 7 September 2010 as the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Operations Unit on the two main areas dealt with by his unit: Royal and diplomatic protection and Counter-terrorism.